Recently, wind turbines have received increased attention as an environmentally safe and a relatively inexpensive alternative energy source. With this growing interest, considerable efforts have been made to develop wind turbines that are reliable and efficient.
Generally, a wind turbine can include a plurality of blades coupled to a generator rotor through a hub. The generator rotor can be mounted within a housing or nacelle, which may be positioned on top of a tubular tower or a base. The hub and blades may form a wind turbine rotor. Utility grade wind turbines (for example, wind turbines designed to provide electrical power to a utility grid) can have large wind turbine rotors (for example, thirty or more meters in diameter). Blades rotationally coupled on these wind turbine rotors can transform wind energy into a rotational torque or force that drives the rotor of one or more generators.
The tower or the base, or other portions of the wind turbine, can include sections secured to each other by welds. These welds can secure two surfaces together. For example, a cylindrical section may be secured beneath another cylindrical section thereby forming a portion of the tower. The lower section and the upper section may be welded to each other.
The welded parts may be subjected to numerous physical forces. For example, welded tower components may experience cyclically compressive and tensile forces as the wind turbine sways. In addition, physical forces may result from other factors, including but not limited to, environmental effects, operational effects, and/or exposure to changing conditions. If a weld of the welded components is unsuccessful, the parts may be more susceptible to failure. For example, force supplied by wind and/or force supplied by rotation of the blades on a wind turbine can produce fatigue loading on towers in the wind turbine. This fatigue can result in failure of the weld and failure of the wind tower.
Generally, when parts are welded, the method for analyzing whether a weld has the desired mechanical properties is performed during the process of welding or involves complex and/or expensive analytical instruments.
What is needed is a device and method for measuring whether a weld has the desired mechanical properties that can be utilized after the welding process and has reduced expense and/or complexity.